


Rainy Day

by grandfatherclock



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25613317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: Jester sits by the window alone and considers some bad news she's just been dealt.But sometimes pleasant company makes that easier.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 5
Kudos: 82





	Rainy Day

**Author's Note:**

> Something short and sweet while I work on my WIPs <3

The rain is drizzling miserably outside and Jester closes her eyes. Her head rests against the windowsill.

The droplets make a sound when they smack against the glass, after all—little _thunks_ , so light and numerous that they might as well have not happened at all. Jester tries to keep count, tries to make a rhythm of them, whispers a soft _doot-doot-doot_ to herself. Imitating the sound of her ringtone, but even that’s faltering, even that’s listless.

Her phone is on the table. The screen is still lit up, shining bright against the expensive mahogany of the table her mother bought for her apartment.

Her mother bought a _lot_ of things for this apartment, there was so much anxiety and fanfare over Jester moving out and she’s _grateful_ , she really is. She can see blue and white, can see smooth bubbles around the texts she and her mother sent each other. She doesn’t have a perfect memory like Caleb, who can and has told her Frumpkin’s preferred route of stroll around his own apartment when they end up in the elevator each morning, but she remembers enough.

Something like, _Jester, my dear… I have some bad news._

Jester had responded in tandem with something close to, _OHMYGOSH, NOOOOO DID NUGGET POOP ALL OVER YOUR CARPET MAMAAAA IM SO SORRY OH MY GOSH—_

Jester sighs, and then sighs once more. The second one is deeper.

_There’s a huge storm._

Jester knew that, Jester _knew_ that She’d been pacing anxiously this entire week, checking the weather reports for the distant Nicodranas. Checking flight logs, listening to foreign networks with their interviews of climatologists, experts in their field talking about the _storm of the century_ —

_I can’t visit you this summer after all._

“Doot, doot, doot,” Jester sings, closing her eyes. She feels like a taunt string pulled to the brink—but not in two directions. Rather, in infinite trajectories. One back home where her mother is awaiting a reply that Jester hasn’t even begun to put together inside her own mind. One here in the Empire where Jester’s professors faces twist at her accent and distracted tone of thought. One in the Lucidian where her friend Fjord is following his dreams. One in Artagan’s beach-house she’d spent the earlier part of the summer. And one somewhere unknown, a man with many rings on his fingers somewhere far away.

Jester reaches for her phone, and with trembling fingers types, _It’s okay, Mama! You just have to bring me even more pastries this Christmas >:D!!!!_

_Thunk_.

Strange, there’s water on her phone screen. Her window is closed to the rain.

Jester is faintly aware there is something heaving in her chest. She’s bowing over her phone like someone punched her in the gut and her eyes are _spilling_ as she whimpers through it. It’s been a while since she cried, she nearly forgot the sound of her strangled gasps.

_Doot-doot-doot_.

Her mother is _calling_ her and Jester shrieks, fumbling with the phone. She lets the sound of her own singing voice fill the quiet and sets the device down on her table, fingers clenching tight into fists beside her. The stupid Empire didn’t allow her to bring her pets when she flew over, something about them not having the right _shots_. So very _stupid_.

_Doot-doot-doot_.

Jester stares out the window and tries to rest back at her perch, but the emptiness that’s been residing within her since she moved into this hollow place twitches, rising like a wave that threatens to wash away footprints by the beach. Her fingers flinch against each other as she tries to tap them in some imitation of a beat and it’s only when there’s a sudden _knock_ at the door that the phone quietens.

“Oh, Jester,” her neighbour calls. Caleb says her name very endearingly. “I think I got some of, ah, your mail by accident.” He huffs through the words, befuddled and awkward to the very end, and Jester wonders how he even knows she’s home.

Then her eyes twitch to her glittery phone case and she remembers how _loud_ it is. “Gimme a sec!” She cleans her eyes and checks her appearance in a hallway mirror. Her eyes are tinted a bit too much for her liking, but she brushes away the tears and tries for a smile.

It’s _convincing_.

The door creaks open and the visage of Caleb is revealed like curtains parting to give way for a splendid art piece underneath. The light in the flickering hall illuminates the angles of his face, framed by fiery picturesque reds strung together in a messy ponytail. She can hear his lovely pink lips part, a breath catching as he takes her in—and ohhhh. _Ohhhh_. His eyebrows—equally red, equally burning—furrow and he looks down for a moment. Either taking in the muddied brown of the rugged floor or avoiding her gaze.

Jester is wiser than most people consider her.

She giggles, the sound light and easy, like it were made of birthday cake and ice cream, as she watches his gaze struggle back to her freckled wide nose, offering her some envelopes. His own are scrunched under an elbow but he handles hers with such _care_. Jester finds herself holding a breath as their fingers touch, just momentarily. “Thank you, Cayleb!” she chirps. “How is Frumpkin?”

Unlike Jester, Caleb filed his forms properly. He’s offered to help her bring over Nugget, bring over Sprinkle, and that’s… unbearably sweet in a way people don’t tend to associate with the dour librarian.

They don’t know him like Jester does.

They don’t know that his lips twitch into a resigned but mildly impressed smile as he finds drawn dicks on the library books Jester returns, him instinctually checking the back as she giggles behind her fingers to her mouth. They don’t know how he can sing in _Celestial_ , does so under his breath as he sorts books, when he doesn’t think Jester can hear.

“Very good,” Caleb sighs. “Though he is still fussy about milk.” Caleb has to beg Frumpkin to eat, it’s an interesting ritual. Caleb often rues for his first cat, another Frumpkin, who ate happily. There’s this light in his eyes before it’s shuttered away to shadowed memories Jester is not privy to, but smart enough to know float around him, just outside the scope of her vision.

His teeth sink into his lower lip.

It’s addicting.

“Maybe Frumpkin would like donuts,” she says, proud of how her voice doesn’t tremble. She’s suddenly self-conscious of her rumpled clothes, the stain on her shirt. “You should try it!”

Caleb laughs softly. He has a subtle laugh, Jester likes hearing it. “Ja… ja, I should. Anything at this point.”

There’s a lull in their conversation. Jester watches as he takes a hesitant step back, preparing herself to chirp an easy goodbye so she could go back to her rainy misery. There’s this well in her throat, and it seems to only deepen into permanence as he gazes away, hair perfect as it falls down his neck. Lonely strands are playful around the main expanse of his hair and she wants to braid it, maybe. Braid it with lovely flowers.

Then he looks back and she feels suspended in time, eyes widening as his gaze seems to splinter into her. “I heard about the storm in Nicodranas, Jester.” He sighs, the sound too soft to be a hiss. “The storm of the century, they said. In the news. I’m so… very sorry.” He looks mournful, forehead crinkling. As if he knows no greater tragedy than this quiet one, though she knows that cannot be true.

Truly, Jester is the least affected by this mess. Her mother, her _country_ , is undergoing such a mess right now… she’s blinking, and she knows what comes next.

“It’s okay,” she squeaks. “You know, it’s hard for Mama to be ready to travel… this just took a lot of time, and now she can’t, and I’m so sad for her…”

She doesn’t know her hands are trembling until Caleb is shifting closer, until he’s right in front of her Until his blackened fingers are clasping over her own. “I’m sad for her,” Caleb says gently, and as if no force in the world could ever bear to stop him, his thumb traces over her thumb. She shivers from the heat of his touch. “Your mother is an incredible woman, and life is… cruel, and unfair. For making the difficult choice she made further difficult.”

His eyes are so shiny, so empathetic, that it makes something in her want to crumple and be thrown away. Like paper around a rotting apple core, the way she sees Fjord doing it sometimes despite her protests. “Thank you,” she whispers.

“No need,” he says, squeezing her hands. “And I’m… very sad you can’t see your mother, Jester.” She can see him suddenly look aghast, suddenly look _tormented_ , and as sure as a prophecy he flinches away from her touch, his hands tucking into his arms as he crosses them. His envelopes get further crumpled and he doesn’t seem to notice. Doesn’t seem to care. “Mothers are so, so…”He smiles weakly. “Mothers are so important.”

“Would you tell me about yours?” Jester suddenly asks, and her cheeks bloom. Flushing like a garden rioting with the incoming spring. She watches him carefully. “I mean—you know… it seems like you miss her a lot.” _It’s like you understand_.

Caleb looks down at his crossed arms and Jester watches some of his hair fall over his forehead. He’s as still as a statue at first and Jester simply waits. Waits his posture loosens into something that approaches ease. “She was very proud that I got accepted into the Soltryce Academy,” he says very gently, everything in his voice frayed. “Set me on a track for the most prestigious universities…” His eyes are distant, a memory replaying in his mind that she again is not privy to. His face _twists_ and he attempts a weak smile for her.

It’s not as good as Jester’s.

She stares at him for a long time. Then, deliberately, delicately, she pulls at the envelopes brutalized by his tight grip and Caleb is still as she holds them in front of him, placing it in his hands. She has to pull away from his touch to do it, and she tries not to miss him too outrageously. “Take care of your stuff, Cayleb!”

“Danke,” he mumbles, his own face flooding with heat.

Jester tugs his hand and he follows, hesitant. “I need to think,” she says, hoping he will understand the simplicity of what she’s asking for. Companionship, but his unobtrusive sort. The one that keeps kind company but doesn’t forcefully guide her into perpetual pleasantness. Somewhere she can _breathe_.

Caleb nods. “Ja, well. I have mail to check so…” Their footfalls sound like a sporadic heartbeat, and when Jester looks back to see her glittering phone shining on the table, the screen lit up against the muted misery of everything else… well.

It doesn’t seem so scary.


End file.
